Darkover: First Contact (64 page)

He stepped into the boat and rowed quietly across the Lake, struck by the eerie silence of the water and the dark reeds. Bard had told him—briefly—of the spell put on the boat. He found the Lake depressing, and once or twice, briefly, he felt dizzy, with the curious feeling that he was rowing the wrong way, but he looked at the shore and the low line of the island against the water and rowed on. Paul had read in Bard’s mind the terror he had known. Even for Carlina Bard had no wish to face it again, far less to set foot on the shores where, it was said, any man who set foot must die. He felt growing oppression, a mounting sense of doom, but he had been warned against that and it did not frighten him unduly. If he had been a man of this world, vulnerable to their spells and illusions, he supposed he would now have been gibbering in terror. Considering what he had read in Bard’s mind and Melisendra’s, Paul was glad for his own immunity.

The boat scraped on the island’s shore where, so Paul had been told, no man had set foot for more generations than could be counted. He had no sense of awe—what were their religious taboos to him? He himself had always considered religions something priests had invented to control others and support themselves in idleness. But accumulated custom could have its own force and Paul was not at all eager to face
that.

A well-trodden path, lined with sparse shrubbery, led upward from the beach. Paul skirted it, keeping in the shadow of the trees, and hid behind the projecting curve of some building as a pair of women came down to the path. They wore dark dresses and had sharp, curved little knives hanging in their belts; and to Paul they looked formidable, hardly like women at all, with their gaunt, strong-chinned faces and big rough hands and shapeless garb that showed nothing of feminine curves. They scared him. He had no desire whatever to be seen by them, or to see any more of them than he had to. A scrap of memory flickered through his mind, that it had always been death to spy on women’s mysteries and for that reason all sensible societies had always outlawed women’s mysteries.

“I thought I heard the boat,” one of them said.

“Oh, no, Sister Casilda. Look, the boat is on the shore over there,” said the second, and Paul was glad that he had sent it back on the rope. The second woman was a hearty, double-chinned old matron and he wondered why she was here—he would have expected her to be somewhere terrifying her grown daughters and daughters-in-law and putting the fear of God into her grandchildren. He could imagine virgin priestesses as neurotic and beautiful young maidens, but solid, chunky, capable grandmother types? Somehow it caused his head to spin.

“But where is Gwennifer?” asked the scrawny Sister Casilda, and she reached up to the high pole anchoring the boat’s rope. She struck the bell, hard, with the handle of her little knife. But there was neither sound nor movement on the opposite shore. “It is not like her to sleep at her post. I wonder if she is ill?”

“More likely,” scoffed a third woman who had not spoken till now, “she has drunk all her two days’ ration of wine at once and is lying there sodden drunk!”

“And if she is, it is not a capital crime,” said the first woman. “Still, I feel I should pull the boat back and go over. She may be lying there ill and untended, or she has fallen and broken a bone as old women can do all too easily. She might lie there for days until the next pilgrims come!”

“If that should happen, indeed I would never forgive myself,” agreed the other, and they pulled down the rope and began to haul the boat ashore, got into it and began rowing across. Paul stole up the shore, glad that he had not injured the old ferrywoman. She would indeed be found lying there spectacularly drunk, but there was no evidence left that she had been harmed, or that anyone had come anywhere near her. In fact, he had
not
harmed the old lady—he had simply given her a pleasant drunk, and from the way the women talked, it was not the first time it had happened anyhow that she should get drunk and sleep at her post.

His spine prickled with dread—if he had followed his first impulse, to knock her down and tie her up before he got into the boat, an alarm would be out even now that an intruder was loose on the island.

He had assured himself that none of those women was the one he wanted. Bard had shown him a portrait of Carlina, first warning him that it was very much romanticized and had in any case been taken seven years ago; but he felt certain he would recognize Carlina when he saw her. And along with this he felt a certain grim dread. He and Bard had a bad habit of wanting the same women. But Bard had made it very clear:
this
one he could not have. He had read enough of Bard’s thoughts to know that Carlina could, for a time at least, drive all thoughts of any other woman from him. It was something Paul had never sensed in Bard before: he was
obsessed
with Carlina, not so much the physical woman, but the
idea
of her.

God Almighty,
Paul thought,
suppose when I set eyes on Carlina she has that effect on me and I can’t resist her!

Well, it would only mean that the inevitable confrontation with Bard would come a little sooner, that was all.

If he could deceive the girl into thinking that he
was
Bard—would that make it easier? Or did she hate and fear Bard as Melisendra had come to hate and fear him? The way Bard spoke, they had been childhood sweethearts, handfasted, separated by the old king’s cruelty. But if she were as eager to join him as that indicated, what was she doing hiding here among the priestesses of Avarra?

He could pass himself off as Bard except to someone like Melisendra, who knew every nuance of Bard’s behavior. But Carlina had no intimate experience of Bard. Paul knew from the mind of his double that the closest contact Bard had had with Carlina was a couple of chaste kisses—from which, in any case, the girl had shrunk away. If he could get Carlina to accept him as Bard, then the original of that name could be put quietly out of the way, and he would have freedom, and a kingdom....

But he would not have the one thing that had made this world worthwhile to him. If he played Melisendra false, she would have no reason not to expose him. And in any case, he must be more like Bard than he had thought. The business of ruling a kingdom seemed dull to him. Unlike Bard, he had no taste for war for its own sake, though he seemed to share Bard’s talent for it. War, to Paul, was simply the necessary prelude to an orderly state of affairs where things could be put in order, and he would be deadly bored with ruling over a kingdom once set in order. What did he want, then? Oddly enough, he’d never stopped to think about that, nor had Bard, sure that Paul, being his double, shared his goals, cared to ask him.

Well,
he thought,
if I were free I’d like to take Melisendra and go off somewhere exploring. There’s a lot to see here. Maybe, someday, settle down and have kids and raise them. And horses; I like horses. A place where things would make sense to me, and I wouldn’t get into the kind of trouble that got me into the stasis box in the first place. A world where I wouldn’t always be running up against impossible rules and regulations.

It was a shame, really, that it couldn’t end that way. Bard was welcome to the damned kingdom. All hundred of them, for that matter. Maybe he could convince Bard that he meant it—hell, why shouldn’t he, they could read each other’s minds; Bard would have to believe him! And if he had Carlina, he wouldn’t want Melisendra. Erlend, maybe, but not Melisendra.

Only Bard would never believe that while Paul lived he could be safe. Perhaps he should make Carlina his ally at once; he’d never thought he’d stoop to making friends with a woman! Women were for one thing, and one thing
only
. But that wasn’t how he felt about Melisendra. Somehow she had became his friend, too.

A crackle of bushes and steps on the path recalled him to his danger, and he slid into the shadow of the shrubbery again. Three women were coming along the path, and Paul, peering out, saw that one of them was Carlina.

She was pale and thin, and so small that she came barely up to his chest. Her hair was tied back into a long braid. She moved with the same calm, detached walk as the other priestesses, and her shapeless dress made her look clumsy. Paul stared from concealment, in shock. This—
this
was the Princess Carlina, the woman with whom Bard was so obsessed that he could think of nothing and no one else? And for this he would give up the beautiful ripeness of Melisendra, who was, moreover, the mother of his son? Melisendra was also beautiful, witty, intelligent, schooled in
laran,
and possessed of all the graces to adorn a court and become a queen, or at least a general’s lady; and she had fought at Bard’s side in battle. Paul had thought that he knew Bard well, but now he was shaken to the core by the knowledge that the differences lay deeper than he could have imagined.

But Bard did
not
want her, Paul thought as he watched Carlina moving away. He couldn’t. He
knew
what Bard wanted. He had wanted Melisendra, till she had wounded his pride unendurably. He had wanted the round-bodied little wench they had shared after the battle. Want Carlina? Never.

He was
obsessed
with Carlina, and that was a different thing. As if Bard had told him so, he knew that what Bard wanted of Carlina was that she was King Ardrin’s daughter, the reassurance that he was the king’s lawful son-in-law, not an exiled outlaw desperately trying to reclaim some position, some identity.

All the more reason,
Paul thought,
that I should make Carlina my ally at once . . . and yet, I could never give up Melisendra for this. Madness! Melisendra would even make a better queen.

A dynastic marriage with Carlina would give Bard—or Paul in his place—a claim of his own to the throne, if the sickly Alaric died childless—which seemed likely. Well, then, the throne and Carlina for Bard. And for Paul—freedom and Melisendra! Bard would never feel safe while he was alive—but if he could manage to get away, preferably as soon as possible, then perhaps Bard would be too busy holding his throne to send after them. But first, Bard must have Carlina.

The priestesses had gone along the path, and Paul stole after them, keeping in the shadows. First one, then another went into small houses at the side of the path. Carlina turned into one, and after a moment, inside, he saw the tiny glow of a lamp. Paul hid to consider. Not that he was really afraid of the women. But there were a lot of them, and they had those wicked little knives.

Carlina must be given no time to make an outcry. Not even a mental one. There were sure to be other telepaths in this place. Which meant—he considered it coldly—that he must knock her down and render her completely unconscious with one blow before she saw him or was alarmed at the idea of an intruder. And he must have her well away from the island before she saw his face.

He slipped noiselessly through the door. Humming a tune to herself, she stood trimming the tiny wick of the little lamp. Then she took off her black mantle, hung it over a rod, and reached up to unfasten her braids. He did not want to wait while she undressed; in this cold he could not take her far without clothing, and he knew he could not put clothes back on her limp body. He slid from his place of concealment and struck one hard blow, watching her crumple soundlessly to the floor. He was shocked, unaccustomed as yet to what little
laran
he had, to the sudden
nothingness
where, a moment ago, there had been a presence. Suddenly afraid, he bent to reassure himself that she was breathing. She was. He bundled her limp body into the black cloak, wadding a couple of extra folds over her nose and mouth. She could breathe, but the cloak would stifle any outcry, though, if she woke and felt fear, the alarm would be out and the hunt up within moments. He carried her out, kicked the door shut behind him. Now came the one real risk of the whole performance. If someone should see him now, he would probably never get off the island alive. He carried her swiftly down the path to the boat and hauled it over. Half an hour later he was riding away from the Island of Silence, Carlina’s limp body trussed across the back of his pack beast. He had made her as comfortable as he could, but he wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the island, as quickly as he could. With luck, they might not miss her till morning; and he had seen no riding horses on the island at all. But sooner or later she would recover consciousness and make some form of telepathic outcry. And he wanted to be far enough away, by then, so that it would make no difference.

She seemed still unconscious when he reached the place in the hills where he had left the escort. His men were ready saddled, with a horse-litter standing by.

He motioned to them. “Mount and get ready to ride. Have you got a fresh horse for me? Yes, and extra horses for the litter, so we won’t have to stop anywhere for post horses.” He dismounted, lifted the unconscious bundle that was Carlina into the litter, and closed the curtains.

“Let’s go!”

 

The sun was rising when they stopped to breathe the horses. Paul dismounted, swallowed a bit of food—there was no time to stop and cook a meal—then went and thrust aside the curtains of the litter.

Carlina was conscious. She had gotten the gag out of her mouth. She was lying on her side, silently and desperately struggling to tear loose the knots around her hands.

“Do they hurt you, my lady? I will loosen them if you like,” Paul said.

At the sound of his voice she shrank away.